


The Price of a Smile

by yourguardianangel



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: 1800s, Alternate Universe - Paris, Alternate Universe - Theatre, F/F, Fluff, French setting, Hell, Humor, Jean is always grumpy, Levi is a primadonna, M/M, Marco is a loser, Minor Krista/Ymir, Minor Levi/Eren Yeager, Minor Reiner Braun/Bertolt Hoover, Minor Sasha Blouse/Connie Springer, Paris - Freeform, Phantom of the Opera AU, Theatre!AU, ballerina Mikasa, ballerina Sasha, does NOT follow the musical plot, he is THE primadonna, lighting master Armin, lots of humor, opera protege Eren, phantom!AU, poto!AU, side ships everywhere, stagehand Connie, stagehand Jean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-14
Updated: 2016-03-08
Packaged: 2018-01-19 09:41:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1464679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourguardianangel/pseuds/yourguardianangel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jean doesn't mind his job at the Opera Populaire. Sure, he doesn't <em>love</em> it, but he doesn't <em>hate</em> it either. Honestly. </p><p>He could deal with the antics of the gossipy ballerinas, and the tantrums of Levi, the opera's primadonna. He could perhaps even cope with the insufferable attitude of the primadonna's protege, Jaeger. All of that just sort of comes with the territory. </p><p>If only it weren't for the ridiculous superstitions of the cast. Really, who could ever believe in something as silly as an <em>opera ghost</em>?</p><p>...</p><p>The Phantom of the Opera AU in which Marco tries (and fails) to woo Jean with his mysterious phantomly ways, and Jean just wants everything to run smoothly for one damn time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Jean Kirschtein didn’t believe in ghosts.

The whole idea of the supernatural had always seemed like utter codswallop to him, thank you very much. And yeah, you can shut the hell up Jaeger, that was one time. Ghouls, goblins, witches, the whole lot were children’s stories, and they didn’t scare him one jot.

In fact, Jean hadn’t ever been particularly afraid of anything. If he thought about it, his utter indifference towards such things as darkness, dust, heights, and spiders was probably one of the chief reasons he had succeeded so well at his job. His lack of care certainly made it easier to swing between the high ropes and pulleys of the opera house, adjusting the flies and sets to the whims of the director on stage. The pay wasn’t really that great, but the motley cast and crew had already grown (very much like a fungus) to be his family over the short months of him accepting the job. Connie really wasn’t that bad to work with either, and was actually quite good at what he did, when he could be torn away from that hopeless ballerina in the training chorus. They really were quite the destructive pair when they were together, although they had nothing on that insufferable operatic protégé, Jaeger. But, hey, best seats in the house every night, if you didn’t mind the way the lingering smoke from the oil lamps below clung to your every breath and made your eyes water. Piece of cake.

So Jean consoled himself as he climbed the wooden ladder to his post, high above the Opera Populaire. Thick, coarse ropes hung on either side of him like rough vines as he ascended into the gloom, the sound of rehearsals following him up into the dim shadows of the theatre’s eaves. There was nothing particularly out of the ordinary about it, and his shoulders curled inwards at the thought of his strenuous but unchallenging routine. His dust-streaked waistcoat caught on a loose nail in the exact same place as it had yesterday, and he let out the smallest of frustrated huffs as he freed himself and continued the upwards trek. Nothing to get excited about.

That Rivaille fellow was calling from centre stage again for god-knows-what, and Jean felt his mood sour in tandem with his expression. Jean could picture him quite clearly, after bearing witness to none too few of the man’s flights of temper; he’d be tapping his little heeled boots against the ground, hands perched against his hips and eyes narrowed to slits. The less physical emotion he was displaying, the more terrifying his voice would be. He probably had some ridiculously large object upon his head as well, be it wig or hat or otherwise; the costuming department had made it their mission to compensate for the man’s underwhelming height in as many ways as they could before he up and quit for good. Jean knew that Levi Rivaille was quite the primadonna, but everyone in the company was painfully aware that if he walked out for good, the whole troupe would fall to ruins. Most people, therefore, just did as he bid and stayed out of the way. Plus, his vibrato could cut a whole chorus line to shreds.

Jean was almost 120 percent certain that Jaeger was fucking him.

He sighed as Levi-Prima-Donna-Rivaille’s episode reached a crescendo, and began unravelling one of the counterweights so he could reset the flies for the first act. His lips were curved down but his hands were sure upon the ropes; he drew no pleasure from his work, but he knew what he was doing.

That was why it came as somewhat a surprise to hear the definite _whoosh_ of a fly moving far too fast, the crack of it hitting the stage floor, and the startled cries of the actors below.

“What the….?” Jean murmured. His brow furrowed further in confusion; the rope in his hands was still taut with the weight of the backdrop he was handling. Something else must have come loose…  
“KIRSCHTEIN!” came the imperious cry, and Jean snapped to attention, tying off the rope in his hands swiftly before leaning over the edge of his support plank. His palms prickled with sweat as he peered over the edge to the stage below. Thoughts began flooding his mind as a throbbing panic built. Falling stage equipment was a serious hazard; what if someone had been hit with the falling fabric? What if they were injured? What if someone was about to die and he was going to get blamed? Or, even worse, if it turned out to _somehow actually be his fault_?

The scene upon the stage was panicked but not chaotic; from his vantage point, Jean could see the crumpled remains of one of the furthest away flies lying upon the floor, wrinkled and dark like an elephants skin. Thankfully, no one seemed hurt. His shoulders relaxed minutely. Not a problem then.

The angular face pointing up at him, adorned with slitted eyes and a ludicrously oversized powdered wig, seemed to think otherwise.

“Are you trying to kill the very people making your miserable life possible, Kirschtein?” Levi hollered up to him. He looked, in every sense of the word, ridiculous. The opera star was swamped under piles of overly-luxurious fabrics that only served to make him smaller in comparison. It was a testament to the whole company’s fear of the man that someone hadn’t fallen over in peels of giggles yet. Jean rolled his eyes; the man could be so dramatic sometimes.

“Of course not, Levi! I wasn’t even touching that fly when it-”

“It’s _Monsieur Rivaille_ to you, boy!”

“Please, monsieur,” Jean tried, “It wasn’t me, and Springer’s on break. There’s no one else up here, sir.”

A strange quiet passed over those on the stage, and whispers shivered through them like a draught. Jean sighed. Damn theatre people and their superstitions. Levi seemed to be of a similar opinion of him, casting a withering look upon the lowly chorus members around him. He shook his head, breathing out a word that Jean couldn’t hear but kind of looked like “-ucking amateurs,” and directed his voice up towards the eaves once more.

“That’s your responsibility, kid, I don’t fucking care what you do up there as long as you don’t ever let something like this happen-” he was cut off abruptly once more as – was that a shoe? – hit the prima donna squarely upon his wig, sending it rolling away across the floorboards. Jean could see Levi’s face growing red under the thick layers of makeup as his greasy dark hairnet was exposed. Nervous laughter swelled across the stage and Jean looked on in pleased bafflement as Levi stormed off the stage, a placating Eren sweeping up the wig and following him. It was definitely a shoe down there, polished to a fine shine and black as night upon the scuffed floorboards. A small chuckle slipped past his lips, his mouth pulling up in a smile. About time the midget got a shoe to the head, really, Jean thought to himself. His thoughts were drawn back suddenly to his own lofty space, suspicion lacing itself up his spine like a wire brace at the sound of the suspended walking planks gently brushing against each other. There wasn’t meant to be anyone else up here….

His eyes narrowed in the gloom, straining for a view of whoever was messing with his workplace. He stood silently from his crouch, poised over the edge, and brushed at his cheek distractedly as he picked his way over to the place of the shifting planks. He stopped above the epicentre of the disturbance, looking around. Between the swaying of the boards he could make out exactly where Levi had been standing. Right below this spot…

He looked around, peering between the raised canvas drops and velvet curtains, but he could see no one and nothing. He was completely and utterly alone. The whispers from the stage floated to the forefront of his mind once again as he stared around at the empty space; scared, electrified words that he had picked out amongst all others.

 _Opera ghost_.

…. 

“There’s no such thing, Bertholdt,” Reiner insisted with a loud belch. Several chorus girls in various states of undress tittered at him as he nursed his bottle of wine in one hand. 

“I swear, Reiner, I saw it! The ghost was right above me, on the mezzanine, and then the next second he was gone! Straight into thin air!” Bertholdt’s eyes were wide as he regaled them, his skin glistening nervously under the candle light. Jean was in the corner of the dressing room, listening as the other cast members _ooh_ -ed and _aah_ -ed at the crew members’ tales.

“What did it look like, Bert?”

“Was it horrifying?”

“Did it leave you a message?”

“What happened?”

“Well, it was dark, in the shadows, and I couldn’t really see too well… I was overcome by such a tremendous shaking that I could barely keep my lamp aloft…” Bertholdt fidgeted with his shirt sleeves as Reiner leered at him.

“It must have been the ghost’s powers!” a wide-eyed ballerina insisted. Jean huffed. How silly they all could be sometimes.

“I’ve heard that spirits can turn any man’s wits,” another said seriously.

“I couldn’t agree more with you, my wise little _fillette_ ,” Reiner winked at her and pulled Bertholdt unceremoniously into his lap, to raucous laughter. He swished the liquids in his wine bottle around and took a long chug from it, his throat bobbing as he did so.

“I don’t think she meant the kind of spirits you were thinking of, R-Reiner,” Bertholdt stammered as he tried to extricate himself, blush travelling all the way down to his shirt collar. He couldn’t quite drag his eyes away from the movement of Reiner’s neck, and his attempts to get up were feeble at best.

The cast and crew always got a bit rowdy in the week leading up to the opening of a new show; Jean had learnt that by now. They were only further fuelled that night by the strange goings-on of the theatre that day, and whilst yes, Jean was interested in who was messing with his lofty domain, he had little time for the phenomenal tales of the stagehands. He’d heard them all before, anyway.

Jean didn’t look up as Ackerman slid silently into the seat beside him. She was still bedecked in the stiff folds of a tutu, and the fabric hissed like hidden serpents as it rubbed against itself, but she had wrapped her shoulders in a dark red silken thing. Jean presumed it was a token from her motherland. He waited. They had only ever engaged in a handful of conversations, as she tended to prefer the company of other permanent opera-house residents, like Jaeger, and the lights-master Armin. Despite this, Jean knew that the ballerina was very direct, and would always convey whatever it was she wanted to say in her own time. He took a swig of his own bottle of cheap alcohol, ignoring the burn as it hit the back of his throat. There were worse things to drink, he mused, but they were few, and not sold in a bottle.

“Strange behaviour for a ghost, don’t you think?” she murmured. Her soft voice lilted with the faintest trace of an accent, calling forth echoes of shivering lotuses and silk. Jean was caught off guard. He hadn’t really picked her as the superstitious type. He turned his head to look at her as she continued.

“Dropping shoes on opera singers… Doesn’t seem like the actions of a vengeful spirit at all.” Her dark hair had been let out of its tight bun, obscuring her face from his view. Jean knew that she was practically unreadable offstage, regardless, so it would have done him little good anyway.

“Seems more like someone is trying to be noticed,” she said finally, and slid into the recesses of the changing rooms like a tulle-dipped shadow. Jean reclined in his chair, the sounds of the crowded room fading away as he thought. The young woman’s words had left him with more questions than he had begun with. Who would be trying to get noticed? Who did they want to be noticed by? What on earth could they have to gain from messing with Jean’s things and exciting the cast into a paranormal frenzy?

He wandered home through the cobbled Parisian streets with clouded thoughts, and the memory of echoing laughter drew a small smile from his lips as he finally drifted to sleep.

…

In his months of working at the Opera Populaire, Jean Kirschtein had earned the illustrious reputation of being ‘the organized one’. Amongst the creatives that comprised the theatre company, that was one of the most prized and difficult of reputations to earn, and Jean didn’t really understand how he’d ever stumbled into that label himself. He was constantly misplacing his things; hell, he’d never held onto a stub of pencil for more than an hour at the theatre before it disappeared into the ether, and don’t get him started on his cigarettes. Those things turned into mythical creatures whenever he entered the premises. The worst thing to lose had been his pocketwatch; it had been a gift from his grandfather, and even though it hadn’t looked like much it had honestly meant a lot to him. He had spent hours as a child running his fingers around its scuffed and beaten edges, memorising the exact shape of the engraved rose upon the inside. Someone had probably hocked it in a Bastille alleyway for shit-all, and the thought of that always soured his mind a little bit. 

No, the truth was that Jean was always losing things. It was the difference between himself and others amongst his profession that ultimately led to his dubbing as ‘the organized one’. Where others would panic, would scream and shout and throw tantrums, Jean would just calmly find another of whatever he (or other people) had lost. He was lucky, he guessed, in that more often than not he just happened upon things that he needed. Ballerina missing a shoe? Jean would spot it tucked behind the curtain near stage right. He didn’t bother wondering how it had got there. Levi’s makeup powder puff has flown the coop? Someone, probably that dumbass Jaeger, had left it lying on the ladder rung up to Jean’s ledge. Jean had never felt that there was anything strange about what the others had termed his “special talent” for finding things. He’d always thought that everyone else were just idiots for leaving their things in weird places.

Some people used to joke that their things were taken by the Opera Ghost.

Those people weren’t joking too much the day after the fly fell.

What others had joked about in the comforts of the changing rooms now made them jump at every shadow. However much they had laughed the night before, Jean noticed as he arrived, that the ballerinas walked in pairs down the halls. He didn’t care. They always were the most flighty of the choruses anyway.

He had come into the theatre earlier than usual to double check that all of the rope knots were secure. It was a pain in the ass getting up earlier and slogging all the way from Montmartre to the theatre in the early morning, but the owner of the opera house, a Mister Smith, had insisted. And hey, as long as the boss remains happy, the cheques get filled, right? Jaeger barged into him in the narrow hallway as Jean was cutting his way back stage.

“Watch it, Jaeger,” Jean muttered over his shoulder with a scowl.

“ _You_ watch it, horseface,” Eren replied, turning back to face him. His eyes glowed unnaturally in the morning light.

“I know it’s hard for you, seeing as you’re a fuck-up and all, but it’s costumed run-through today, so try not to kill the stars of the show, yeah?”

Jean enjoyed watching Jaeger’s gloating eyes turn around to face Mikasa Ackerman’s cold gaze. He stopped dead. Jean had seen men three times her size cower and flinch at the sight of her, and although she and Jean weren’t friends, per se, she had never stood for Eren’s stupid-ass mouth.

“Mikasa…” his tone was whining. Her eyes flicked briefly over to Jean, her face stony as ever, but he knew when he was being dismissed.

He was just disappointed he didn’t get to witness the slaughter.  
…

_“Whoever did this has got a lot to answer to!”_

The shrill cry of a Jaeger in distress and the abrupt cut-off of Rivaille’s aria roused Jean from his lunch break stupor. He had been swinging his legs aimlessly, perched on one of the loose suspended platforms and listening as the rehearsals continued below. Shrill laughter echoed through the empty seats and Jean looked down in curiosity. It only grew louder and swelled as more people seemingly took in the sight. He wanted to know what all of the fuss was about. If people were laughing at Jaeger’s expense, he wanted to know why.

And boy was he glad he looked.

It was easy enough to spot him, really. Jean usually took his break around this point in the play, because there wasn’t a major fly change for a good long three scenes, but he was pretty sure that Eren was usually dressed in the mysterious, handsome black-and-white getup of the love interest, with trailing dark cape and boots to match. Now, however, the primadonna’s protégé appeared to be wrapped up in an offensively orange cloak that barely reached past his elbows. It did nothing to hide the new state of his other garments.

Hundreds of tiny Polka-dotted holes had been punched all the way through his frilly blouse and puffy pantaloons, and the remaining fabric had been splattered with every colour known to the visible spectrum. It was so full of holes that in many places it rendered the costume almost completely see-through, and even from his position Jean could see that Levi’s eyes were bugging out of his head. He looked like he was going to bust an artery.

“What the fuck have you done, Eren?” Levi asked over the din. Eren’s face morphed into an expression of abject horror; he seemed to have forgotten whose performance he was interrupting when he began his rampage. His entire appearance went from chariots of hellfire to cowering baby bunny rabbit in the space of a single second.

“I didn’t do it!-”

“You stupid piece of shit-”

“Oi! Ladies! Take your idiocy outside, we’re trying to put on a show here!” The conductor, known to everyone as Hanji, wrapped her baton upon a music stand imperiously. Everyone froze. Levi had Eren by the scruff of his luminescent cloak, and Jean wasn’t sure if they were about to swing at each other or begin passionately kissing. They withdrew from each other’s personal space as the chorus watched on with baited breath.

“Get changed out of those ridiculous clothes,” Levi hissed, “and let me finish my damn aria.”

Eren hung his head and exited the stage. No one questioned it when Mikasa Ackerman silently followed him. It was Jean, however, the grin still dying upon his lips, that questioned his own movements down towards Eren’s dressing room. He approached the elaborately embellished door left slightly ajar, but paused at the sound of voices. He wasn’t certain, but Jean was pretty sure that the muffled sounds coming from inside were _crying_.

“- don’t understand, Mikasa. I checked this costume this morning. I put it in the wings myself for the quick change…” Yep, that was definitely Eren.

“Doesn’t someone usually help you with that change?”Mikasa’s voice was soft and even compared to Eren’s.

“Yeah, Thomas is usually there.”

“Was Thomas there today?”

“Yes.” There was a pause, a faltering in Eren’s tone. “B-but it’s really dark in there, so I didn’t really _see_ him, exactly…”

“Did he speak to you?”

“N-not that I can recall…”

“So you can’t be sure.”

Silence followed. A chill ran down Jean’s spine.

“I think we’d better find Thomas,” Mikasa said finally, and Jean was already way ahead of her.

…

The one-man, two-actor hunt for Thomas went fruitless, and Jean had to return to his roost before he could cover much ground anyway. He was caught on the way back to his post by Zacharius, the set designer. He looked kind of harried, his hair sticking out at odd angles like he hadn’t bothered to brush it and his eyes seemed to be trapped far away. Granted, the man kind of always looked like that, but it was particularly apparent to Jean today.

“Hey, Kirschtein, there’s a new backdrop that needs to be hung, pronto. Smith wants it up before final rehearsals tomorrow, we’ve been working on it through the night.” He rolled his eyes. “Apparently scene five wasn’t _majestic_ enough.” Jean felt the man’s pain. He knew what Smith was like when it came to exercising ultimate directorial power over the productions. He offered a weak smile and a friendly hand on the shoulder.

“That’s no problem, I’ll get the ropes set up for it right now,” Jean said, thinking through where he would potentially hang it in the crowded lofts of the theatre. He was sure there was space somewhere…

There was one space left. Jean knew it was there. He found the empty slot easy enough, loose ropes and handles exactly where they should be.

Everything except his pulley hooks.

“Goddamnit,” Jean muttered to himself, resigning himself to a life of dragging himself up and down that stupid rickety ladder as he headed to find the spares. They normally stored that sort of thing somewhere in the props storage, a huge basement-level room riddled with shelves and cupboards. Jean had only had to go down there a few times but he was pretty sure he knew where to find them. The room was just as dim and dusty as he remembered, and smelled of rotting canvas and velvet. Wooden shelves sagged under the weight of hundreds upon hundreds of _things_ ; skulls and candlesticks and swords and clocks, folding fans and furs and vials and seashells. The sounds of the theatre died away completely within there, a silent world completely of its own. Backdrops lay neatly wrapped upon themselves, brown tags with their descriptions scrawled on dangling from the ends of them. They fluttered as he walked past them, a tremulous whisper that made Jean feel as though he was being followed. His uneasiness grew when he found the door he was looking for. The uniform layer of dust had formed a dark crescent shape around the door. Someone had been there recently.

The door seemed eager to open, and when a limp hand, still grasping the empty bottle of absinthe, Jean could see why.

Sprawled uncomfortably across crates half full of cables, handles, and pulleys, a familiar black and white costume draped across him like a blanket, was Thomas.

Well, wait until I tell Jaeger, Jean thought wryly. He nudged Thomas with his boot. The man snuffled quietly in his sleep. Knowing a lost cause when he saw one, Jean chose to work around him, digging out from underneath the useless stagehand the things that he needed and hoisting the intact costume over one arm. He left the storage cupboard door open and sauntered back towards the stairs, where light and sound and chaos awaited him as always, and wondered briefly if someone had _meant_ for him to find the costume.

He dismissed it as paranoia.

No one cared about him enough to bother, anyway.

…

“Mother _fu-_ ”

Jean was bleeding. He knew this. He pulled himself up onto the small wooden platform at the top of the ladder, nursing his hand to his chest. Not for the first time, he wished that there was a little less rat shit and a little more sunlight up there in the theatre eaves, but holding his hand up close to his face he could see that it wasn’t so bad. He’d done far worse to himself over the years accidentally; his job required working at speed, in darkness, at great heights. He’d had a few slips before. Nothing major though.

“Ow.” Jean could see that there were only a few short, shallow puncture marks along the ridge of his palm, slowly oozing dark liquid. One still had an object embedded in it; he pinched it between two fingers, pulling out what kind of looked like a splinter in the dimness. He was a fast healer, and he knew the scratches would scab over pretty soon, but it was a painful nuisance to endure. It was the strange bruising sting behind the cuts that made him look around for the offending object, as he raised his palm to his mouth to suck on the little cuts. There, to his left; a red rose had been left thoughtlessly on Jean’s ledge, the stem now crushed where his palm had been. Petals crumbled off the flower when he picked it up, brow furrowing as he inspected it closer. There was a little white card threaded to it by a thin black ribbon, and the script inside was careful and foreign to him.

 _You should smile more often_ , it read.

Huh.

He raised it gingerly to his nose; the clear scent filled his lungs, drowning out the other lingering smells of dust and pigeons. It was still beautiful, Jean thought, even if it was a little bit broken now. He remained fixed to the spot, eyes fluttering shut in a strange peacefulness as he breathed in the flower, until he noticed that he wasn’t bleeding any more. Sounds of life filtered up through the hanging canvases, still distant enough, but Jean knew they’d be on the stage and expecting the right sets in place in only a few minutes now. It was only then that he swung back into action, as though waking from a dream, moving slowly at first and then sweeping along the planks with a practiced ease. He left the rose lying on the fixed ledge; now that he knew it was there he wouldn’t squish it again. He began setting counterweights in place for the screen he needed to lift out of the way, and ran through the mental checks of his station and area.

As he worked, Jean caught sight of the close-cropped hair of his co-worker. The other man, a mister Conrad Springer, was short, and young, almost too young for Jean to take him seriously. But _boy_ , could he climb those ropes like no other. Jean had never seen anyone else, not even the acrobats on stage, perform such razor-quick and precise movements between the ropes and levels of the theatre. Where Jean used the labyrinth of ladders and platforms, Connie would fling himself like a chimpanzee between ropes and beams and flies alike. Rumors said that he had been raised in a gypsy circus as a trapeze artist, and Jean had half a mind to believe them. Connie was wearing his usual work getup of just a scuffed undershirt, oversized trousers and suspenders. At first, Jean had mistaken this for the sloppiness of an underclassman. Once he’d seen the guy in action, however, he had quickly realized that Connie Springer dressed in that way more for the ease of his unconventional working style rather than out of intellectual or social ineptitude.

“Connie!” Jean called, eyes set upon the rope in his hands. The ache of the rose thorns was still there, but he’d be fine.

“You’ve gotta stop leaving your weird love tokens for Sasha on my ledge, man, that shit’s not cool.”

There was no reply from the other man, but this wasn’t unusual. Jean kept working, and as he had learnt to with most of the other people in the Opera Populaire, he waited.

“What do you mean, weird love tokens?” Connie appeared a few minutes later, sliding to a stop down a nearby rope for all the world as though he was in one of those newfangled elevators. Jean didn’t even really look up at these every day displays of the fantastic anymore. They really were just another part of his life.

“You know, the rosey-notey kind of love tokens,” Jean replied. He grunted as the rope he was working with finally came unravelled from its peg and Jean supported it against his hip as he lowered it over the edge. It was an enormous, whimsical crescent moon, and he let it hang suspended about half way down the height of the stage, where he tied it off again. Connie’s expression, when he looked up from his work, was of confused concentration. Jean thought he looked like he was trying to invert his own eyeballs with the power of his mind.

“Nope,” he said finally, “wasn’t me.” Jean considered him. Despite his quick turns and fancy footwork amongst the flies, Connie was a bit of an airhead.

“You sure, Connie?” If it wasn’t his co-worker leaving his romantic gestures lying around the place, Jean didn’t really know _what_ to think.

“Definitely,” Connie was nodding his head seriously. “I haven’t bought her anything in almost a week now, not even a croissant.” His expression lit up with sudden comprehension. “Maybe that’s why she’s been so mopey!” he exclaimed. He beamed.

“Thanks Jean!” Connie’s foot darted out to the side, pressing a wooden lever down that sent counterweights falling. Jean let out a quiet cry of frustration as Connie was towed out of sight up the rope.

“Hey! I just set that one up!”

“Sorry!”

By the time Jean had put it back to rights, all thoughts of the rose had fled and Connie had set the other flies into their places. They stood on opposite stabilized platforms that were tucked high up in the wings, one on stage right and the other on stage left, and were left to watch the goings-on below over the rails. Jean retreated to his platform, easing himself down onto his backside and kicking his legs out over the edge.

He didn’t notice that the rose was gone.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final installment is in the works, hopefully it wont take as long this time! :)

It was a week before the ‘phantom’ struck again.

Jean had almost been relieved to enter the theatre and find it in chaos, the ballerinas staring in outrage up at the ceiling as male catcalls rained down from all around. The young ladies’ bloomers and pointe shoes had been strung up like bunting overnight between the grand chandelier and the edges of the high ceiling dome in long, frilly lines. Jean couldn’t help but blush and guffaw slightly, but it was mostly over the scandalized reactions of the ladies rather than thoughts of the garments in question. He was quickly silenced, however, by the piercing stare of Ackerman. He had seen that glare before. It was the kind that meant he needed to do something quickly, if he wanted to keep all of his extremities intact. His situational analysis was backed up by his sudden intake of the terrifying choreographer. Known only by the name Ymir, the giantess of a woman was renowned for her fierce dedication to the rhythmic arts, only matched by her even fiercer protectiveness of the members of her ballet company. Quite frankly, she looked ready to murder the next person who sniggered or catcalled her girls. She had the tiniest of the ballerinas wrapped up in her powerful arms, and Jean could only just see a peak of blonde hair, blushed red to the roots, poking out from underneath the woman’s heavy overcoat. Her narrowed eyes fell upon Jean like an overhead canvas.

“Your assistance is required, _Mr. Kirschtein_ ,” Her accent was heavy on the best of days, but today it had reached an all-time high on the do-not-mess-with-me-I’ll-sell-your-liver-to-pharmacists scale.

“I would like this rehearsal _back on schedule_ , if you would be so kind.”

Jean fought the urge to cower under her piercing gaze. This was not a woman asking a question, but a queen giving a command. Jean sighed. Why was it always him left with these sorts of tasks on the eve of a production?

“I’ll go get them down for you,” he said, and she gave a stern nod before turning and shepherding the ballerinas back towards their change rooms. Jean could see from the centre of the stage where the long strings of apparel had been tied off, against an ornamental colonnade that circled the theatre’s rooftop dome. The only access points were through the lighting box, and whilst he was comfortable going up there, it wasn’t his usual domain. Armin had been the lighting master since before Jean had arrived, and it was his job to maintain and manage the various pieces of spotlighting machinery dotted about up there. Jean appreciated the young man’s quiet efficiency, if not his taste in friends. Apparently he and Jaeger went _way_ back.

The lighting box was empty when Jean entered. A few of the enormous mirrored hemispheres used to magnify the brightness of the spotlights stood unlit against the wall closest to the theatre auditorium. He knew that there were more of them scattered between smaller lighting boxes all around this level of the theatre, so Jean supposed that these ones needed fixing or something. He found the narrow staircase that led him up further into the ceiling, and began climbing.

Honestly, Jean had resigned himself to the fact that he would forever be the theatre’s errand boy first and ropesmaster second. That was okay. What he hadn’t resigned himself to yet was the dogged belief of the cast that all of these ridiculous _shenanigans_ were being caused by some witty-yet-vengeful spirit. He fumed to himself as he climbed, the garbled gossiping of the workers on stage fueling his internal commentary. What motive would any ghost have for stringing ladies’ laundry across the theatre roof the day before the premiere? Or dressing up Jaeger in ridiculous clothing? Sure, Jean had found both events rather funny, but so had everyone else. Was this, this _phantom_ , just a nuisance, or was he trying to entertain people?

The miniscule door to the railing swung open under Jean’s hands, and he was quick to spot where the ropes had been poorly tied off. _Clearly someone’s not very good with ropes,_ Jean thought with a smug smile. He couldn’t help it, okay? He still got a childish kick out of being better than other people at things. Even if it was just a ghost’s handiwork. He rolled up his sleeves to his elbows, leaving the thinner sleeves of his undershirt rolled down, and surveyed the scene from his new vantage point. Jean had no clue how the phantom had done it, but the rope was in fact one consistent string that fed straight through the chandelier and out the other side. Impressive. The only way Jean was going to get it down was by untying one end and then pulling the rest through, pantaloons and all, on the other side. The pointe shoes would hopefully fall off the ends of the rope when he let them go, so they wouldn’t do any damage to the chandelier itself.

Emphasis on the hopefully.

He let the rope in his hands go, and listened to the satisfying noise of a flock of silken shoes hitting the velvet seats below. He allowed himself a small moment of relief.

 _One down, one to go,_ Jean thought as he wound his way around the dome. It was a tight fit for him, and he had to crouch so he didn’t hit his head on the curving ceiling. He kneeled around the other side when he reached the rope. It was more comfortable that way. He gave the rope an experimental tug. The chandelier tinkled like the orchestra chimes and shuddered slightly, but the rope fed through relatively easily. Even the ballerina’s silky undergarments remained unscathed as he pulled the rope back through, and for that Jean was unbelievably grateful. There could be nothing worse than suffering the collective rage of the 104th Ballerinas troupe, a number which included Mikasa and would undoubtedly be led by Ymir herself.

The weight of the rope worked in his favour, practically pulling itself through the last few feet and cracking down against the audience seats below. Jean debated pulling it up to his precarious railing platform and carrying the whole messy lot of it down in one go, but those ropes weren’t exactly light, and that staircase not exactly easy to manoeuvre, and Jean doubted the ladies would appreciate him manhandling their private property too much. Those were his reasons, certainly not general laziness, for letting the rest of the rope slip and coil itself on the theatre floor like an enormous python.

_Job well done._

He almost missed it, it was so well hidden. Jean wouldn’t have felt it if he hadn’t been peering over the edge of the decorative railings like a five year old to look at the rope as it fell. He wouldn’t have put his hand around the ornate ballistrade, wouldn’t have felt the loose piece of paper under his fingers. Jean leaned back on his haunches and looked at the slip in his hands. It was thick white parchment paper that Jean swore he had seen before, sealed shut with a red wax sigil. He broke the wax apart with a little tug.

The words inside were simple and short. Jean recognized the handwriting from the last time he had found a note in the theatre.

_You look terribly handsome when you smile._

What.

What on earth was that even meant to mean.>  
Jean felt the gears grinding in his mind. Two and two were finally clicking together. All of the theatrical shenanigans. The clues. The notes. The rose. The phantom.

Was he… Was he being courted by a bloody _opera ghost_?

Oh god.

No. No, surely not.

 _I need to talk to Mikasa,_ Jean decided, and he did his best not to trip over until he was within survivable distance from the ground.

…

“I can’t help you, Kirschtein.”

“But _Mikaaaasa_ ,” Jean whined, following her as she worked her way between the mirrors and makeup. The young woman was difficult to track down at the best of times. Jean had eventually found her here, one arm stacked high with discarded clothing, the other gracefully picking up abandoned stockings and brassieres from the changing room floors. Of course she would tidy up after her ballet company. Of course no one would notice that sort of thing.

“You’re the one who was feeding me cryptic messages from the start!”

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” she quipped. Her tone was harsh, and her shoulders seemed to be sagging slightly. She wasn’t maintaining her usual warrior-like stature.

Jean wondered briefly if she was getting run down.

“Are you even meant to be in here?” she asked.

Jean looked around at the empty girl’s change rooms. There was a surprising amount of feathers in there, all things considered. Perhaps they were all secretly roosting.

“Probably not,” Jean conceded.

“Then I suggest you go home, Kirschtein. The show hasn’t even started yet and a lot of people are already at their wit’s end.” She started to move away from him, tight-lipped, but his hand reached out and snagged her around her wrist. “But Mikasa, you _have_ to help me-”

“I don’t _have_ to do anything for you.” Mikasa wrenched her hand from his grip, her towering pile of washing swaying dangerously as she stepped away with a little more force than necessary. Her expression was severe, like one scolding a bad puppy. Jean was man enough to admit that it stung a little. He didn’t follow her as she went to continue cleaning up after the other girls in the change room. Instead he let his head droop until he was staring down at the cracks in the floorboards, at an utter loss as to what he should do. Mikasa stopped. Jean looked up when she heaved a world-weary sigh. The ballerina raked a hand over her face, pulling her attractive features down in a grotesque fashion, and her eyes snapped upon him like a whip.

“Look, I don’t know much about him at all,” she said finally. She was weighing her words carefully. “But what I _do_ know is that everyone’s perception of him is wrong. It’s clear that at the very least he trusts you, Jean. Let him come to you.” A brief flicker of amusement flittered across her otherwise stern features. Jean swore the corners of her mouth turned up a little. “Be patient, Jean. He’s been patient with you.” She cocked a single manicured eyebrow at him, as though daring him to question her, and glided away.

“That is NOT HELPFUL, ACKERMAN!” he hollered after her, and the quiet echo of a laugh made him smile at himself. He’s totally got it.

Heh. Maybe he has.

Jean retreated to his empty roost, climbing the ladder and getting caught on that one nail as always. He didn’t have anything to do, and most everyone who could go home already had. The live-in theatre people would be elsewhere, in their bunkrooms or out drinking. It was the night before a production premiere. That’s just what they all did. Half of them would still be drunk tomorrow morning when they rolled into the opera house for final checks.

Jean swung his legs out over the loose-hanging planks, easing himself down to sit, and looked out across the empty rows of seats. He set down a confiscated bottle of _something_ next to him after taking a good long swig, and pulled a frayed, loose end of rope into his hands. He began working it absentmindedly between his fingers, coiling it into knots and out again.

He had come here to think.

He needed to get his facts in order. If he could do that, he could figure out what he was meant to do. No more fumbling blindly around the edges of things. _Start with something simple, buddy, anything,_ he thought to himself.

_Fact number one; Eren is a piece of shit._

He mentally slapped himself on the back over his own astounding wit, smirking at himself outwardly, then focused back onto his task. Quite frankly, Jean had no clue as to why this _phantom_ had been drawn to _him_ , of all people. It made no sense. Sure, he had some pretty dashing good looks, he supposed. He could look in a mirror. He knew he was hot shit. But he worked in a theatre, for crying out loud. Most of the people there were paid for their looks and talents. It wasn’t like the establishment was lacking in regards to attractive young people. This phantom character had the pick of the crop, really, but the thought filled him with a weighty, tight feeling that dwelled in the centre of his chest. He pushed it back.

 _This is ridiculous,_ Jean thought to himself as he took another swig from his bottle. _You’ve blown this_ way _out of proportion. No one_ ever _said that the opera ghost was crushing on you. A single rose is not solid evidence._ Come to think of it, Jean honestly had no idea what it was the phantom wanted from him. So far, despite the collective fear and outrage of the cast, all he’d really done was provide Jean with a couple of practical jokes (and the clean-up duty, thanks a million), and a few cryptic little notes telling him that he ought to _smile more_ -

Oh.

Maybe. Maybe this phantom is _lonely_. Maybe, for whatever reason, he just wanted a _friend_

Jean immediately dismissed the idea, scoffing at himself. If that was the case, the ghost had exceptionally poor taste in people. Jean knew that he was irritable. He wasn’t exactly the friendliest guy around. In fact, despite being a pretty damn attractive young man, Jean’s face was so good at scowling that he had managed to avoid getting too close to anyone at the theatre at all. He could safely say that there was not a single person in the entire opera house that he considered to be any more than a comfortable acquaintance, even Connie. They were friendly to each other. They weren’t friends.

A stray thought bubbled up from underneath his many musings, sending ripples through his mind. Jean frowned. _Does he… Does the phantom think that I’M lonely?_ Jean felt his feathers ruffling in indignation. He wasn’t _lonely_.

 _There is a very significant difference between being_ alone _and being_ lonely _, and this uppity ghost better damn well know it,_ Jean thought. He wasn’t going to let _anyone_ be his freaking _pity friend_. He ignored the other little voice that whispered to him, reminding him that yeah, maybe he _is_ a little lonely. That little voice was an asshole, anyway.

He was still stewing when he became aware of it. Jean wasn’t even sure how he knew, but somewhere to his right, in the safety of the shadows, he knew he was being watched. The darkness was darker in some areas, and Jean could _swear_ that he saw the dull shine of shoes in the black. _For a phantom, you’re not particularly sneaky,_ Jean thought, but he didn’t say anything. It was best just to let them come out when they wanted to, and he was still a little miffed at the thought that this _phantom_ may be trying to be his pity friend.

_“Isn’t it a little late for theatre mice to be sitting by themselves?”_

Jean could tell immediately that the voice was male, and relatively young. Hell, he may even be as young as he is; Jean would need a good look at his face to be sure of anything. He waited to see if the figure would say something else. Thankfully, they seemed to have a whole dramatic spiel prepared. He glided forward out of the depths of the gloom and into the half-light, his movements measured like an actor’s. Jean could make out his tall frame, swaddled in a long black cloak, but it was his face that he had the most trouble seeing. Jean couldn’t be sure of his appearance, as almost half of him had been hidden away behind a sculpted white mask. There were freckles dotted upon what little of his features Jean could see.

“Didn’t your mother ever teach you it was dangerous to be out after da-AH”

The phantom’s eye’s grew comically big (brown, Jean noted) and his arms uselessly flailed about within the tangles of his cloak as he lost his balance. The great, feared, mysterious phantom tripped in slow motion, foot caught on the hem of his cloak, and landed face-first on the planks with a muffled “oh no”. He wriggled a little on the unsteady boards like a fish gasping for air. His efforts to detangle himself were utterly useless, and finally he lay still.

“Fuck,” the phantom cursed.

And just like that, Jean was laughing.

Jean had to hold his sides as he laughed until it hurt, cheeks aching from smiling and small beads of tears clinging to the corners of his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Jean wheezed. “Truly, I am,” he was out of breath.  
“Are you alright?” Jean asked finally, his face still bearing a splitting grin as he swung himself up to stand over the pitiful man.

“ Oh, God, this isn’t- this wasn’t what I…” his voice broke at the end of his small outbursts, and he was breathing harshly.  
“Come on, roll over. I’ll help you up,” Jean said placatingly, but the young man didn’t quite seem to be listening. A gloved hand emerged from within the dark folds of the cloak, taking Jean’s offered hand tentatively within its grasp, and Jean pulled him to his feet. The planks swayed under their feet, and it was an automatic response for Jean to put his other hand out on the man’s shoulder to steady him.

“Easy there,” he said, as the wobbling subsided. His cheeks were still hurting from smiling for so long, but he couldn’t fight it. The phantom was cupping a hand over the mask-side of his face, where he was adjusting it. _It must have come loose or something during his fall,_ Jean thought. _Bit of a silly place to have a mask, really. Doesn’t really hide his identity at all_ .

Jean was able to examine the phantom’s features far better at this proximity. To Jean, he seemed to have a handsome face, his heavily blushing cheeks still rounded slightly with baby fat and doused in the freckles he had seen before. His eyes were warm but anxious, and his expression so openly crestfallen that Jean couldn’t help but feel a fondness for him already. He wasn’t anyone that Jean recognized, and for this he was kind of thankful.

“You okay?” Jean repeated, raising his eyebrows.

“You’re just the same….” He said, his tone full of a quiet horror. Jean wasn’t sure he was even meant to hear the words.

“I’m fine, please, I- I have to go…” he insisted, jerking away from Jean’s touch as though it was stinging him. He lurched dangerously on the planks, but recoiled from Jean’s advances of help.

“But- wait! I don’t understand!” Jean was quick on his feet, but the phantom seemed to be quicker, even in such a state of distress. He barely glimpsed the corner of dark cloak as it vanished around one of the stage curtains, and as he rounded the corner Jean felt his shoes sliding out from underneath him. He quickly recovered, pounding along the wooden causeway. The phantom had stopped sharply in front of him at what Jean knew was a dead end; all that lay around this corner were a few loose ropes and empty space all the way to the stage floor. He had nowhere to go, and Jean felt a small streak of pleasure down his spine at the thought of having outwitted the infamous opera ghost. It was quelled beneath the unexplainable twisting of his guts, however. The phantom in question turned to face him, his chest heaving and face drained of all colour. Jean slowed to a halt a safe distance from him. His heart did an unsteady hurdle when he realized that the heels of the phantom’s shoes were hanging over the edge of his wooden board.

There was so much he needed to ask, but he couldn’t help the sense of uneasiness that was clinging to him. If there was one thing the cast had instilled in him, it was the belief that ghost or not, the phantom was wily, and highly unpredictable.

“Who are you?” Jean asked finally. From his vantage point, Jean saw the phantom’s lip twitch. It was a minute physical betrayal of his emotions, warped somewhere between sadness and loathing, and Jean didn’t know if it was meant to be directed outwards or within.

“No one of importance,” he replied, voice soft and head tilted to one side. The words sounded like they were being repeated. He spread out his arms, stepped gracefully backwards and vanished.

“No!” Jean yelled, darting forward too late. He skidded to his knees on the wood, preparing to hear a sickening crack and to peer down at a limp and bloodied form far below. For some reason the vision of that young man lying, broken and still upon the ground, was unsettlingly vivid, and Jean thought that he may be ill. No sound came, and Jean chanced a look over the edge to see only a clean and unmarred stage floor.

The phantom had disappeared yet again.

And now, he was upset.

…

“What have you done, Jean?”

He hadn’t been in the building for five minutes before he was assaulted by the quiet danger of Mikasa. She appeared particularly sinister today, and Jean felt a dark weight settle down deep inside him.

“I don’t know,” he told her, and he meant it sincerely. He hadn’t slept well at all, tossing and turning and dwelling upon what had happened in the theatre for hours afterwards. Perhaps she could see some of that, for she chose not to press it.

“You’d better come and see then,” she said. “Hanji and Armin are about to have breakdowns.”

The theatre was once again in chaos, but this time there was no wit to what Jean saw. The audience seating had been papered in the orchestra’s scores, loose sheets strewn everywhere and instrument parts everywhere. The instruments themselves had been destringed, the thin strips of cat gut laid out in neat piles across the stage floor, and the reeds from all of the woodwind instruments left in a heap like a gypsy’s fortune bones. Three burly stage hands were walking amongst the seating rows, picking up the scoresheets and bringing them back to Hanji. Jean could pick out Reiner amongst them, scowling heavily down at the papers amongst the plush velvet and carpet.

Hanji herself was a sight to see. Her hair was wrapped and twisted haphazardly around her conductor’s baton like a large hair pin, sticking out at all angles and giving her the overall appearance of a particularly manic peacock. With each piece of paper that came her way there was a short period of intense study, face screwed up in a look bordering on hysteria, then the conductor would fling it with strange orders at the faithful orchestra members around her that weren’t trying to restring their instruments.

“Oh my god,” Jean said. Mikasa stood at his side.

“This isn’t all of it, either,” she murmured, eyes skirting upwards. Jean followed her gaze, and it was then that he knew. Whatever was going through the phantom’s mind when he did this, he had been _very, very upset_.

All of Armin’s delicate lighting equipment, sweet, harmless little Armin’s weeks of hard work and adjustments, had been completely dismantled and strung from the hands of the ornamental Greek statuettes that lined the private boxes. Jean could see brass cogs and metal magnifying domes hanging from each other like an infant’s mobile. They were too far out from the balustrades for Armin to reach himself, and so it looked as though Eren had volunteered to help him, half dressed in his costume, and still in his undershirt. His brow was furrowed in concentration as he did his best not to break any of Armin’s carefully modified equipment, and from the worried glances Eren kept throwing over his shoulder at the pale young man, it looked as though Armin had been crying.

“This could only be the beginning, Jean,” Mikasa murmured. “Whatever you’ve done, you’ve got to make it right again. Everyone’s working against the clock to make sure we don’t have to cancel tonight’s performance, but if anything else happens…” Jean understood. He knew that the cast would be deeply disturbed by these happenings. It would be a small miracle if they made it to curtain with everything back in order as it was. Hot anger clutched at Jean’s chest; anger at himself for somehow causing this mess, anger at the phantom for not giving them the chance to talk. Communication had to happen now. He simply couldn’t risk any further sabotage by the phantom.

Something was niggling at Jean though, some small notion that refused to materialize into a distinct thought. Even at the worst of times, the phantom had never done anything more than be a humorous distraction, a nuisance. This behaviour seemed completely out of sorts for him. But then, Jean had somehow left him in a state that was one step short of _completely and utterly betrayed_ , so perhaps this behaviour wasn’t so un-phantom-like after all. Either way, Jean knew what he had to do to get to the bottom of this. Something settled deep in his stomach, and amongst the chaos of the theatre, Jean Kirschtein made a plan.

“I’ll figure it out.”

…

Time passed in a blur of scribbled words and torn sheets of paper, rushing past Jean as he pounded up and down stairwells, around corridors and through passageways. He scattered his handful of clumsy, chicken-scratch notes in anywhere he could think of, anywhere that the phantom had been. The props room was empty when he placed the note there, the lethargic dust motes forming an oasis amongst the chaos of the theatre. He lingered briefly in the door, wondering once again if this was a good idea. It seemed like a bit of a long shot, and there was a lot riding upon this plan. But the lingering feeling, the doubts, had continued to eat He gave Armin and Eren a brief helping hand with the lighting equipment, holding one side of a lens in place with Eren as Armin spun tiny brass screws into their holes. Eren kept shooting him accusatory glances over the top of the piece, but said nothing to him. Nevertheless, Jean was quick to continue on his journey up into the high eaves of the domed ceiling, silent death glares nipping at his heels as he left. He kept one scrap of paper in his pocket until the very end, and by the time he had hidden the rest of his notes his name was being called and he needed to actually do something directly helpful to other people. He hesitated as he placed the last note upon the darkened suspension platform, the one he had last seen the phantom leap from the night before, but had to go back to his post before he could have second thoughts about his plan. All he could do was put his head down, and pray.

…

Jean’s shoulders slumped in relief as the last of the audience made their way out into the cold Parisian night. The whole cast had been strung like a bow the whole evening, wary gazes scanning the shadows for anything suspicious, but nothing came. The performance went smoothly. Hanji’s scores were back in order an hour before the performance began, and no one so much as missed a line. Jean didn’t allow himself even the thought to relax until the final curtain fell, and he remained in silent vigil as the audience all filed out with a pompous sort of polite chatter. It was the kind of buzzing passive-aggression only achievable by those who have never known anything but entitlement and luxury, but now all was quiet. Jean could hear muffled sounds of merriment from below the bowels of the stage, where the cast had summarily retreated to celebrate their achievement.

Jean didn’t wish to join them. He couldn’t. His hands had been shaking throughout the whole performance, mind racing and stomach churning as he prepared himself for the worst. Now, he grown deathly still. All that remained was the knowledge that, for better or worse, the phantom was tired of playing games. _Well,_ Jean thought as he scowled out across the empty theatre, _I guess that makes two of us._ He was still festering on his balcony when he heard the telltale swish of fabric.  
“So, I may have overreacted a little bit last night.” The phantom’s voice came from behind him, hesitant, and all at once Jean felt seething shafts of anger opening up in his core. When he turned, he could see dark rings underneath the phantom’s eyes, sleepless stains marking his skin and sheepishness written across the visible half of the young man’s face. It was as good as a confession. Jean’s jaw tightened against itself, his teeth grinding, and his hands coiled into fists.  
“Oh, do you _think?_ ” Jean all but yelled at him. The phantom faltered, but that was _it._ Jean wasn’t the sort to speak up often, but god almighty when he did it was going to be _biblical_.

“What the _hell_ do you think gives you the right to mess with the hard work of my entire theatre company?! On _opening night, no less_?! You want to throw a toddler tantrum all over the place? FINE! But messing with Armin’s lights?”  
“Jean-“ The phantom’s eyes had grown wide, but Jean wasn’t truly looking.  
“That kid’s been trying to fill his grandpa’s shoes for _months_ now! He’s been working himself down to the _bone_ fixing everything, choreographing each of the changes by hand on his own! And he’s finally getting the praise he deserves, and what should you do? Put him back in square one!” Jean ignored the phantom’s interjections, throwing his arms wide and blocking the exit. He was going to _hear what he had to say, god damnit_.

“And Hanji’s scores?! They were _hand written originals_! Every damn page of every last instrument! Do you have _any idea_ how difficult it was the write those, let alone _put them back in order_?! And with that stupid instrument stunt you pulled, you almost managed to ruin everyone’s big day, and the performance itself! Congratulations, you overgrown _asshole_ of a spectre, you’ve got my attention.” He jabbed a finger into the phantom’s firm chest. “Now you better start explaining yourself, or so help me I will string you up by your ankles and leave you here until tomorrow.”  
Silence fell, punctuated only by Jean’s heavy breathing as he brought himself back down to earth.

“Marco.” The phantom said. Jean frowned.

“What?”

“My name. Marco.” He clarified, a vague smile flickering briefly upon his lips.  
“I don’t give a rat’s _ass_ right now what your-“

“I know... you don’t,” apparently-Marco said slowly, eyes downcast. “but you want me to explain myself to you. I think you deserve to know my name, even if you happen to think so very little of me.”

 _Oh no,_ Jean thought. _He is NOT allowed to pull the sympathy card._ However, after his outburst, Jean couldn’t help but feel confused. He had based his expectations of the phantom upon the events of the morning, and had been itching for him to rise, for him to be angry and violent back, or perhaps even triumphant. Not… This. Through the haze of anger still shrouding his senses, he finally took a proper look at the man standing before him. He was… Calm, and tired-looking, and…. Resigned.

“I shouldn’t have acted the way I did last night,” Marco said. “That was unfair of me, to jump so swiftly to conclusions about you. I just…” the phantom sighed, wringing his hands together as he blushed. “I just really wanted to impress you…” he said weakly, the words almost lost to the shadows.

Jean was lost for words. A thousand frustrated sentiments buzzed angrily inside his head like hornets, and his mouth gaped open in wordless confusion.

“I know that you have no reason to believe me,” he continued, and Jean hated himself for the sissy little stutter his heart gave as the phantom met his eyes. “Truly, I understand. But I ask you, regardless, to listen to me when I say that I didn’t do what you have accused me of.” He sighed, and in that sigh was a deep and winding thread of sadness. He picked at the hem of his cloak with one set of gloved fingers. “Perhaps… Perhaps you would consider this my alibi,” the phantom said. Another gloved hand thrust out of his dark cloak, a thick piece of ivory parchment wrinkling between his fingers. Jean took it, mute as the anger drained out of him through the soles of his feet. Doubt was replacing it as he uncrinkled the parchment, doubt of himself, doubt of his conclusions. Confusion further spiked the emotional cocktail as he stared down at the mess upon the page; lines and dots wound up and down and into every corner of the page, and unhinged cacophony of black and white riddled with corrections and crossings out.

“What is it?” Jean asked finally. The phantom -Marco- looked taken aback.

“It’s… It’s music,” he replied. “It’s… I wrote it for you.” Of course. Jean could see it now. There, on the left hand side, that intricate knot of a line was a treble clef, and below it he could definitely make out a bass clef. The key was a smudgy mess of sharps clustered together to the clef’s right. Jean could hear Marco fidgeting.

“I worked on it all through the night,” His voice was slurring slightly, but Jean didn’t notice. He was busy trying to comprehend what this all meant.

“You wrote me a song?”

“I did,” Marco repeated. Frowning at Jean as though he was being slow. “I didn’t want to, couldn’t stop working… Until it was finished. Which happened to be about an hour ago.” He swayed slightly on his feet as he spoke. Jean had torn his eyes away long enough from the ink-doused sheet in his hands to notice this.

“Have you really not slept at all?” He asked. The phantom shook his head absently, his chin dipping slowly and jolting back upwards. He teetered dangerously towards the edge and Jean reached out automatically to pull him away. Marco latched onto him like a lifeline, leaning heavily against his side. Jean could do nothing but make small noises of surprise as the famous phantom buried the unmasked side of his face into Jean’s shoulder.

“Couldn’t sleep,” he murmured, voice muffled by a mouthful of Jean’s white shirt. “I had to make things right.” Jean felt heat flushing his cheeks. He wasn’t quite sure what he should do. On the one hand, he still had no idea whether the phantom- whether Marco had commited the sabotage of that morning or not. He could be lying, Jean supposed, and even if he hadn’t done it Jean still felt that he deserved to be frustrated with him for their botched first meeting the night before. On the other hand, Marco was warm and exhausted and nuzzling against his neck like a puppy. The man was in no shape to be standing, let alone committing acts of theatrical felony and mystery.

“You are so stupid,” he said, and Marco hummed slightly in agreement. “Where do you even sleep?”

“I live here,” Marco mumbled. Jean rolled his eyes.

“I figured that out, genius, you don’t exactly seem like the type to get out much. I meant _where_ in here am I meant to take you right now, because you are in no state to do it yourself.” Jean waited. He thought that the phantom had actually fallen asleep on him, he was so silent for so long.

“Below the theatre,” he whispered finally, “Through the mirror in the props room. You-” Marco faltered, and Jean could feel him shaking slightly against him.

“You can’t let anyone see me, okay? Please.” There was desperation there, seeping through the man’s exhausted voice.

“Wouldn’t dare,” Jean agreed, and with that what little tension was still in his body dissipated. Marco sagged against Jean, a gangly ragdoll in a dark cape, and Jean lamented how he was going to get one sleep-deprived phantom down his ladder.

…

Honestly, Jean wasn’t surprised when he found the gondola.

“Of course you’ve got a gondola in the bloody Paris catacombs,” he muttered at the lump slung over his shoulder. “ _Of course_ that’s a thing you would have.”

The boat was floating on a questionably misty green river, the way apparently lit by an improbable number of candles. Jean grunted as he let Marco slump into the boat, in a way that was more slowly falling than gently placing. Jean sent a quick prayer out to whatever dark god lived in these tunnels to please, eat the caped one first, before climbing in as well. He took a moment to find his balance before picking up what Jean was officially calling the giant Gondola stick.

“It can’t be that hard,” he said to himself.

…

Jean shook his foot in disgust as he stepped onto dry land, his shoes flicking slime and releasing a quiet squelch as he put them to the ground. _Never again,_ he thought with a slight shudder. Marco, curse him, was still asleep in the front of the boat. Jean was having none of it.

“Oi. You. Marco.” He nudged the young man with his shoe. “Get up, we’re here.” He whined from the bottom of the boat, and weakly waved one pitiful hand up at him. It had lost its glove somewhere along the way. Jean sighed, rolling his eyes, and took the phantom’s hand. He hoisted him up with a faint _whoof_ of breath and a violent rock of the boat, and with some hasty awkward adjustments they were both upon the little port platform. Jean didn’t have the time or the space of mind to take in every extravagant detail of the lair Marco had made for himself. He could see an enormous pipe organ, the intricate golden pipes twisting like the guts of a monster out behind it. There were marble figures, and long sheaths of steeped red fabric draped across the expanses of unsculpted cavern, and small inlets off to the side. It was in one of these that Jean spotted an absurdly big gilt shell of a bed, swaddled in blankets and plush pillows.

“Hey Marco,” Jean huffed quietly as he picked their way over, “I can see your bed from here.”

“Not… How I wanted you to…” Marco sighed, and Jean was glad the man was asleep again by the time he had to think of a response. Jean laid him down in the silly piece of furniture, and stood back. Marco curled in on himself on top of the sheets, a small frown on his sleeping face. His cape was pulling against the bare skin of his throat, and that had to be dangerous…

Jean reached out gently. He pressed his fingers carefully against the fabric on Marco’s neck, searching for a clasp, and Marco gave a small sigh. Jean felt a jolt of triumph as the clasp released, falling away from around his neck, but his victory was short lived. Apparently sleep-Marco was also grabby Marco, and Jean had barely registered the iron grip upon his wrist before he was lying on the soft sheets too, trapped in the limpet-like grip of what was honestly a very shoddy phantom. He experimented, wriggling slightly against Marco’s arms, but the man only snuggled tighter and sighed against his neck.

And so, despite his reservations, and despite the confusion and frustration and general feelings of ‘ _wait, what_ ’, Jean resigned himself to relax, and close his eyes, and be snuggled.


	3. Chapter 3

Jean was slow to wake up, and always had been. His senses always came and went like polite houseguests for the first few minutes before he truly started to stir. That morning (was it morning? Jean couldn’t tell) the first sensation he was aware of was a rhythmic kind of warmth, steady and sedate. It was soothing. He was tempted to just let it lull him back to sleep, its slow, pulsing tempo almost a lullaby. He didn’t, however, because the second sensation he came to notice was the gentle weight slung across his waist, and _that_ was definitely something out of the ordinary for him. The soft slide of expensive sheets against his cheek brought him closer to consciousness. Those weren’t his bed sheets, all thin and scratchy from overuse and under washing. _Which could only mean one thing_ , he reasoned through his sleep-sluggish brain.

_I’m not in my own bed._

He opened one eye, tentatively. The corner of a blanket had found its way over his head during the night, and through the small triangle free of fabric Jean could see a roughly hewn rock wall, the corner of an elaborate filigree mirror, and a dried white mess of a candle. He gently came to the realization that the warmth against his side was, in fact, coming from the other person laying in this strange bed with him. A vicious jolt of panic shot all the way up his spine at the thought. The person sighed against him in their sleep, the quiet rhythm pressed into his neck. Jean’s whole body froze up, his lungs falling perfectly still and his heart skipping a beat as his brain finally caught up with exactly _who_ was wrapped around him for all the world like the world’s worst anaconda. He held his breath, not daring to move a single muscle, listening intently to the small huffs coming from the young man.

Nothing. Not a single hitch.

Jean waited for a good solid minute before he decided that yes, the phantom –Marco, he corrected- was definitely still asleep. He allowed himself to relax a little. Taking shallow, controlled breaths, he tentatively brought a hand down to the arm draped across his middle, running his fingers lightly across the bare skin of Marco’s wrist. His shirt had rucked up during the night, exposing the delicate bones beneath. It was thin for a man of his stature, and his long fingers twitched as Jean drew an experimental circle across the smooth plain of his palm, fascinated. Callouses had formed on the tips of his fingers only, the telltale sign of a string musician, but Jean also had the feeling that the sheer length of his fingers would also make him a rather decent pianist, if Hanji’s second hand rants over a bottle of weird Hungarian moonshine had managed to teach him anything. The hand was warm under his touch, and limp. Easy to escape from if he wanted to. His eyes roved up across the still and silent form next to him, settling on the phantom’s masked face. Curiosity coursed through hism, a jolt that chased the very last vestiges of grogginess away. He wanted to see what the fuss was about, what the phantom- _Marco_ , was so ashamed of that he had to cover it with ghostly white and hide in the shadows.

Jean was slow in his movements, painfully so. It felt imperative not to bump or rouse his sleeping partner as he rolled over. He let out a breath of air that he hadn’t realized he had been holding once he finally sat up, shifting himself a little way across the bed from Marco. The young man looked so peaceful, so content. Jean could count each and every one of Marco’s eyelashes from this distance, each and every freckle peppered across his cheeks. Cheek, Jean corrected. Despite all odds, Marco’s half-mask had stayed in place over night.

Hm.

_Surely it couldn’t’ hurt to take a peak whilst he’s asleep,_ Jean thought to himself. He lifted his hand slowly, the sheets shifting as he did so, and let his hand hover above the edge of the white mask.

_Should he?_

The eyes opened.

Marco sat up swiftly, a protective hand coming up to curl around his mask, feeling at its edges, reassuring himself that it was there. As Jean watched, his whole form closed itself off, retreating, and the soft trust Jean had been admiring only moments before disappeared behind sharp lines of tension.

“Did you see?” Marco asked, his voice cracking and shallow, “Did you do it?” Jean had sat up as well, trying to draw himself into Marco’s eyeline.

“No, I didn’t, I swear to you I didn’t-”

“Why does it matter so much? Why do you care so much for what I hide?” His shoulders were rising and falling sharply with his chest. “Is it not enough that you are here? That you know?”

Jean sat mute, unable to conjure the words that clattered around inside his head begging to understand, to apologise. Marco stood before he could find them, swinging his back to Jean and sliding to his feet as he swept from the room. Jean followed, a sick and heavy knot in his stomach as he helplessly watched Marco pace. All at once, he threw himself upon the overstuffed stool in front of his brass pipe organ and all of the fight seeped from his body. Marco’s breath steadied as he sat hunched, a single hand sliding up to the handwritten sheet of music propped against the instrument. He stared at it a moment, a brief smile pulling at the corner of his mouth, then his hand dropped limply to his side and the paper left his grasp. It glided through the air to rest at Jean’s feet. Jean’s ears rang in the silence, and he picked up the paper with fingers that were suddenly numb. He opened his mouth.

“I’m sorry, Marco,” he began, taking a step forwards, “I didn’t mean to-” A single hand was raised to silence him.

“Just… Go. Please.” Marco’s voice was empty, and hollow, and he kept his head bowed out of Jean’s line of sight. “Leave me be.”

“But…”

“Go _away,_ Jean!” Marco gritted, and Jean took to his feet and ran, sick to his stomach and sore in his heart.

…

He hadn’t really expected to find a world waiting for him outside of the eerie tunnels of the theatre, so surreal his experience had been. He almost expected to return to a world that was utterly empty of anything but himself, a world that had left him behind to dwell in himself and his mistakes forever. But as he stepped out of the dusty mirror in the props room, and into a steady shaft of buttery sunlight, reality struck him again, and he was harshly reminded that _oh, right, I have a job to do_.

The theatre itself was mostly empty, a few musicians reviewing their material before the next evening performance, a few stagecrew wandering amongst the audience seats to collect any stray rubbish. As he walked past the cast change rooms, Jean heard murmuring, and a door opened a few feet ahead of him. A half-dressed Eren staggered out of the room, a thoroughly disconcerting (and exceptionally goofy) grin on his face as he closed it behind him. Even from this distance, Jean could see the trail of bruises tracing their way up the protégé’s neck. He scurried away before he could notice Jean, and Jean pretended not to notice that Eren had emerged from the primadonna’s dressing room as he passed the door. Some things were best not dwelled upon, for sanity’s sake alone.

In his haste to escape from such an awkward encounter, he hadn’t even noticed the looming presence stooped over in the shadow until he had bumped into them.

“Jesus, sorry,” Jean said, fully prepared to duck away and wallow somewhere in peace when he realized who it was.

“Bertholdt?”

The sensitive young man looked absolutely haggard; his eyes were sunken and reddened around the rims, and his arms wrapped themselves defensively around his lanky frame. Jean frowned slightly in concern. No matter what strife he had put himself into, and no matter how much he wanted to hide himself away and ruminate until the sick ebbing and flowing of guilt in his stomach was at least controllable, he could still tell when someone needed help more. He hastily stuffed the piece of paper that was still in his hand into the breast of his waistcoat.

“Are you alright?” he asked, mentally preparing himself for an account of some minor mistake that Bertholdt had overblown in his own mind. _Poor guy is prone to doing that sort of thing,_ Jean thought to himself. Slowly, Bertholdt breathed out a shaky lungful, collapsing down upon himself like an origami crane in the rain.

“I did something bad, Jean,” Bertholdt began, but he bit his lip before he could continue, closing his eyes and shaking his head slightly. He looked like a creature being hunted in the night, something that shivered and cowered and would bolt at the slightest chance given to it. A coil that had been sitting heavy inside of Jean unravelled, and he gently placed a consoling hand on Bertholdt’s shoulder.

“I’m sure it can’t be as bad as you think it is,” Jean reassured him, but that only drew a more fervent shaking of Bertholdt’s head. His throat bobbed as he swallowed.

“It’s my fault the theatre was sabotaged,” Bertholdt whispered hoarsely, and Jean fought desperately hard to keep his expression from changing at those words, even as his heartbeat thundered in his chest and he heard it rushing in his ears.

“Pardon?” Jean said, and Bertholdt heaved another shuddering, dramatic breath.

“It’s my fault the theatre was sabotaged,” Bertholdt repeated himself, slowly.

“And I know who did it.”

…

The arrest report came through at some time a little after three. Jean knew this because he was sitting next to an exhausted and empty-looking Bertholdt in the office of one Erwin Smith, the owner of the Opera Populaire and possibly the most put-together man Jean had ever come across when the officer arrived with its confirmation. A policeman had been summoned as soon as Bertholdt had relayed his story to his boss, reluctantly and with many pauses so that the young man could dab at his sweaty forehead with a handkerchief. Bertholdt was asked to repeat his story yet again for the officer, and the nodded along very seriously before disappearing to make a full report and submit for the arrest warrant. When he returned, eyes wide and reporters baying at his heels, Erwin Smith dismissed his two employees with a calm look towards the door, and Jean scarpered to complete his duties before the show began. It helped to keep his hands busy, and he was able to ignore the distant shouts of reporters, a single name echoing in their questions again and again.

 _Annie Leonhart_.

Unbeknownst to Bertholdt, his little ballerina friend from the rival ballet company possessed ulterior motives to seeing him the night before the premiere.

“I let her in,” he had told Jean in shaking breaths. “I knew her, I trusted her, why wouldn’t I? She said she wanted to be alone, that she was cold and just wanted to be somewhere safe, and I went to find her a blanket or a coat or something and I ran into Reiner...” he had paused, a blotchy flush streaking across his face briefly at the mention. He swallowed.

“When I went back to find her, she was gone. And the theatre…” he heaved a shuddering sigh, “well. You saw it. There was nothing I could do, and every one just-”

“ – Blamed the first thing to come to mind,” Jean finished, his jaw twitching a little bit at the thought. Poor Marco. Honestly, the sheer stupidity of some people. _The sheer stupidity of yourself,_ a cruel little part reminded him. _You were no better. ___

___You are no better._ _ _

__Jean squared himself up and pushed back into his work, throwing his body a little bit more forcefully onto each platform, up each ladder, pulling each rope with just enough recklessness to leave his hands burning and red at the end of the evening, and the evening after that, and after that. The show, for the first time since he had joined the dysfunctional opera house, managed to go on without a hitch, and so he occupied himself with upholding that trend as best he could. Anything to keep his gaze from drifting towards the shadows, searching for something that wouldn’t be there. Not anymore. He’d burnt that bridge a little too thoroughly, ruined his chances a little too soundly time and time again. It was not his place to ask forgiveness where he had shown nothing but deception and callous disregard. He understood that now. And yet, what he would have given to see those brown eyes, such clear, luminescent eyes in the dimness of the theatre once again, to see those elegant hands twisting themselves around the edge of a ridiculous cape again. To see that cautious smile, the way it had looked like it wasn’t sure it was meant to be there at all, like the opportunity in which a smile would be needed had never really arisen before._ _

__Thinking about it wasn’t really a comfort to Jean. Best to just leave it be, if he could._ _

__Others noticed the change in him, of that Jean was certain, but for the most part they stayed out of his way. Eren didn’t try to egg him into fights the way he usually would, choosing instead to linger close to the coat tails of Levi, who in turn treated Jean with a vague, yet haute wariness. Clearly the occasional shoe to the head, whether it was actually Jean’s or not, was enough to keep the primadonna himself in check. Jean avoided Mikasa’s lingering, meaningful glares, and had more than once shouldered his bag and huddled down further into his coat, hurrying to avoid her attempts at conversation (or, he imagined, what were more likely to be upfront threats of the gruesome and linguistically creative kind). He certainly couldn’t deal with that. And if others whispered about him, about the way he couldn’t seem to look at his reflection any more, just in case he saw how dark the circles under his eyes had become, how pale his skin was growing, perhaps _Jean was the phantom hidden among us all along-__ _

__He had to bite his tongue from spitting hellfire at the fools whom he overheard spreading that little chestnut around. So what if he wasn’t seeing the daylight so much at the moment; he worked nights for god’s sake. And if a meal or two or four were being missed because he didn’t really feel hungry then so what? It wasn’t anybody’s business._ _

__And if he fell asleep in the rafters of the opera once or twice, only to wake with tears on his cheeks and a whispered _Marco_ upon his lips, then it was simply lucky that there was never anybody around to see him there._ _

____

…

__It was weeks before Jean found the crumpled piece of paper inside his waistcoat again, the familiar little lines and notes opening up the fresh little scars on his heart. He traced the scrawling swirls of handwriting along the top of the sheet, finding his name amongst the multitude of markings._ _

___He’d been writing this the night of the sabotage,_ Jean was reminded in startling clarity. _He’d been writing this for me_._ _

__An idea struck him like a lighting rig cut loose._ _

__…_ _

__“Where exactly did you get this from?” Hanji asked for the eighth time in as many minutes, their eyes squinting through coke bottle lenses at the page._ _

__“I told you, I can’t tell you,” Jean reiterated, watching Hanji’s mouth form the words ‘incredible’ and ‘what magic’ under their breath._ _

__“Whoever wrote this is a formidable composer,” Hanji said mostly to the empty audience, and Jean fought not to roll his eyes._ _

__“I know,” he said, “I know. Now will you let me use your piano or not?” Hanji looked dubious._ _

__“You will butcher this,” They told him, wide-eyed, “do you even know how to read music, Kirschtein?” He scoffed._ _

__“I’ve been following music for the stage queues for long enough, and I actually received training when I was younger,” He told them. _Way, way younger,_ his brain reminded him. _Waaaaaaay younger.__ _

__Hanji still looked unconvinced. Jean sighed, and ran a hand through his already unruly hair. He hadn’t been taking much care of It for a while now._ _

__“Please?” he tried. Hanji settled a long, assessing look upon him, then nodded._ _

__“Fine,” they conceded, and Jean smiled, “but you must let me help you. And you must feed yourself, you look like a walking corpse. Whoever you are trying to impress will not be so impressed when they see you like this.”_ _

__…_ _

__Hanji, as it turned out, was an excellent tutor, if slightly unhinged and definitely tyrannical, and Jean was more skilled than they had originally assessed. When surrounded by the talent that he saw everyday, Jean was nothing to write home about, but he learned fast, and he picked up confidence on the single sheet of music over the course of a week or two. He couldn’t risk practicing it at night after the real performances, not yet, so he and Hanji worked on it during the day, snatching moments when the auditorium was mostly empty, and the few people around at that time didn’t say anything about it. There was something intimate, something invigorating about discovering the tune bit by bit, phrase by phrase, through each crescendo and repeat and diminuendo. Like tracing the lines on a face he longed to see, to touch, that was just out of reach. He wished that it didn’t simply trail off at the end, with no resolution or ending to the melody. It was somewhat jarring, and Jean may have been able to play what was written well enough, he had absolutely no idea how to finish it himself. He had absolutely no talent for that sort of thing._ _

__“It’s a love song,” Hanji said one day, looking down at Jean in surprise. He paused, fingers above the piano keys._ _

__“I know,” he said quietly, and in place of saying anything else, he began to play again._ _

__…_ _

__He couldn’t practice during the day forever. Hanji wouldn’t let him._ _

__“I’ve heard enough of it,” Hanji dismissed, “and my orchestra has new adventures to embark upon.” They dismissed him with a wave of their hand and a knowing smile, shuffling a stack of new instrumental scores atop the lid of the grand piano.  
“You want to play it, you do it in your own time now.” And with that, he was left with no choice but to wait until the theatre was empty of the evening crowd. He slowly descended into the silent theatre, taking his time as the oil lamps were dimmed one by one, and the auditorium doors were closed behind the echoing din of the receding audience. There was peace in the silence, and Jean didn’t allow his heavy heart to hope as he sat down at the orchestra’s grand piano._ _

__He hesitated._ _

__Took a deep breath._ _

__Placed his fingers upon the keys._ _

__The music flowed through the cavernous opera house, soaring to the ceiling and back as he played. Slowly at first, channelling some of the weariness he felt, some of the quiet longing into the movement of his hands over the piano, the melody reaching his ears in haunting, melancholic branches. Rather than allowing it to cut itself off, he followed the last repeat sign, a little louder, a little more confident, letting the music roll underneath him like the floorboards of a ship at sea. The music was practically egging him on, and he surged, louder and faster and with more emotion pouring out of him than he could have thought possible, so much so that he almost imagined the ivory keys slick with it as they leapt from note to note. He slipped, a wrong note calling out across the theatre like an alarm, and Jean stilled._ _

__His heart raced in his chest as he came down off the strange high of the music. He felt empty in its absence, and closed his eyes, slumping forward over the piano keys. There was silence._ _

__“It’s not finished, you know,” a quiet voice said, and it took every bit of Jean’s limited self control not to spring up off the piano stool right then and there. He took a deep breath._ _

__“I know,” he replied. He heard the quiet shifting of feet behind him, but he didn’t turn to look. Blood pounded in his ears, a crushing pressure in the empty space of the theatre. He had prepared so many words, words that he had pretended so hard not to think about in the darkness of his miniscule rented room as the gas lamps on the street had turned off one by one with the encroaching dawn. They had dried up like cobwebs in his throat now that he was faced with the opportunity to say them. His mouth opened of its own accord._ _

__“I couldn’t do it myself, I-” Jean stopped. No. Those weren’t the words he needed to say. “I’m no good,” he said finally, biting his lip hard enough to make his eyes water, “and it wouldn’t be my place.” He fought the urge to curl in on himself further._ _

__“Oh Jean, you _are_ good,” Marco’s voice said from behind him, much closer now, “you are _so very good_ , and you don’t even realize it-” a gloved hand ghosted across Jean’s shoulder and he finally looked up, the floodgates opened._ _

__“I’m so sorry, Marco, I never meant to-” his words were cut off in a whimper as he surged upwards to meet Marco’s mouth against his own. It was a fluid movement, so effortless and natural and inevitable that he didn’t fully comprehend making until his fingers were winding into Marco’s hair, and Marco’s lips were opening against his like this was something they had done together a thousand times before, and Jean was gasping against him as they moved together in tandem. Marco’s cloak fell neatly around Jean on either side as they desperately sought more contact, tongues grazing against teeth in an overwhelming press of sensation. His cheeks grew wet of their own accord, and Marco wiped at them with shaking, frantic hands._ _

__“I can’t believe you learnt that piece,” Marco gasped against Jean’s mouth, sinking onto the stool beside him to be closer, always closer. “I didn’t think you could even play anything.”_ _

__Even through the haze of Jean’s giddy, tear-stricken relief he found the energy to snort at that._ _

__“Thank you for your vote of confidence,” Jean replied, but he couldn’t even hold onto that thought for very long because Marco had moved his mouth onto the hammering pulse at Jean’s throat and _he was forgiven, God almighty he was forgiven, Marco had forgiven him and this was real, what a time to be alive_._ _

__“I’m sorry I reacted the way I did,” Marco whispered, voice hoarse as he tried to catch his breath._ _

__“Don’t you dare be,” Jean hissed, pressing another kiss to Marco’s lips, “I’m sorry I ever even thought of doing that-”_ _

__“It’s not your fault-”_ _

__“Like hell it isn’t-”_ _

__“Please, just, kiss me-“_ _

__Jean kissed him._ _

__…_ _

__They took their time, they took it slow. There were long nights of conversation on the frozen rooftop, slow dancing in the gently falling snow as stone gargoyles watched on impassively. Jean would occasionally share a cigarette or two with Marco as they huddled together, legs dangling from the ledge over the cobblestones far below and watching the yellowy smoke curl through the darkness. There were other nights where they would descend to Marco’s abode, lovingly dubbed ‘the lair’ by Jean, who immensely enjoyed teasing Marco about his unintentional dramatics. It wasn’t as if Marco had plenty of stones to throw right back at Jean’s glass house, anyway. There they would eat and drink in the candlelight, and Marco would work on whatever composition took his fancy that evening as Jean dozed, or they would spend long hours simply enjoying the intimacy of each others presence, with careful caresses and gentle, chaste kisses. Even rarer were the nights when Jean could convince Marco to bundle up a little tighter than usual and they would scurry the short distance to Jean’s apartment. There Jean would draw circles into the palms of Marco’s hands and tell him about his family, his childhood, his fears and his dreams. It was in Jean’s apartment that Marco finally slid the waxy mask from his face, closing his eyes before turning to face Jean. It was on Jean’s dusty floor that he sat cross legged and traced the disfigurements with his fingertips, pale lightning bolts of scarring carving a map into the vivid red of Marco’s cheekbones, his temple, his forehead. His freckles, dark on one side of his face, were pure white on the other._ _

__It took time, but Jean and Marco eventually discovered the many joys of desecrating theatre property in all manner of ways. And if new, mysterious sheet music scores found their way onto Hanji’s conducting platform after some particularly… _destructive_ endeavors were undertaken in the empty orchestra pit, then who was really to blame?_ _

__The Opera Populaire was haunted, after all._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol, a year and a half later and we get an ending. Bet you all thought I'd died or something. Hope it's not as horrible as I think it is! I was tempted to kill Marco off in a chandelier fire and have Jean learn the piece alone after his death. Wouldn't that have been awful.

**Author's Note:**

> Woo! 
> 
> Hmmm, so who do we think the phantom is, guys? You'll never be able to guess....
> 
> Also I'm sorry that we haven't actually met Marco yet, but he'll be coming out of the woodwork soon enough I promise! Opera ghosts need their grand entrances okay?! 
> 
> Next chapter should be up soon. :) Tell me what you think so far! 
> 
> And if you want you can go check out my little piece(s) of art for this AU at my tumblr account, www.pinkbomberjacket.tumblr.com/


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